Pleasure boats, such as luxury boats, yachts and the like, comprising a garage room accommodating one or more small water crafts are known.
Said water crafts may be, for instance, tenders or dinghies used by the yacht passengers for short distances. Alternatively, said water crafts may have a recreational or leisure purposes; this is the case, for instance, of jet skis and the like.
When the pleasure boat is equipped with such a water craft, it is also usually provided with a system for launching (i.e. setting in water) and hauling (i.e. pulling back on board) said water craft.
In their simplest embodiment, said systems for launching/hauling the water craft comprise an inclined plane, along which the water craft can be moved by means of a chute with rollers and sliders for launching and hauling it. See for instance document DE 19500182.
However, using such inclined plane requires large spaces, which is a relevant drawback in the field of pleasure boats, in which space optimization represents one of the main requirements in the designing step.
On the other hand, systems for launching/hauling a water craft are also known which comprise a platform, on which the water craft is accommodated, and a kinematic system for moving said platform from a first position inside the garage room of the pleasure boat to a second position below the water surface, and vice versa. See for instance document U.S. 2010/0107960.
The evident need for maintaining the platform in a horizontal position (i.e. parallel to the floor of the garage room and to the water surface) all along the movement from the first to the second position (and vice versa) requires the use of very complicated kinematic systems, with all the consequent inconveniences relating to maintenance, risks of failures and malfunctions and so on.
Such inconveniences are particularly penalizing when considering that failures and malfunctions may occur in open sea or in other uncomfortable situations.
Finally, pleasure boats are known which are provided with a system for launching/hauling a water craft that comprises a shelf or platform arranged adjacent to the hull of the boat at the garage room, said platform being able to move in vertical direction between a first position in which the upper surface of the platform is substantially flush with the floor of the garage room and a second position on which said surface is below the water surface. This solution implies evident advantages: firstly, since the platform movement takes place along a vertical direction only, very simple kinematic devices can be used for moving said platform; secondly, when the platform is not used for launching or hauling the water craft, it can be maintained in the first position, flush with the floor of the garage room, and provide an additional space exploitable by the passengers of the boat.
However, the problem arises of transferring the water craft from the garage room to the platform, for subsequent launching, and—vice versa—of bringing said water craft back into the garage room after having pulled it out of the water and onto the platform.
Known systems neither disclose nor suggest any solution capable of carrying out the aforesaid operations in a completely automatic manner.
EP 2275339 discloses a pleasure boat provided with a system for launching/hauling a tender or similar water craft, which system comprises a shelf or platform arranged next to and aligned with the outer side of the boat garage room and movable between a first position in which the wall of the platform adjacent to said garage room is substantially flush with the outer side of said garage room to a second position in which said platform is below the water surface.
In order to transfer the water craft from the garage room to the platform, and vice versa, the water craft is received in a cradle provided with rolling means and the garage room and the platform are provided with respective guides along which the cradle rolling means can move and which are aligned to each other when the platform is in its first position: with the platform in said first position, the water craft can be transferred from the garage room to the platform by moving it along the guides of the garage room and then along the guides of the platform; said water craft can be brought back from the platform to the garage room by the reverse movement.
In the described system, the floor of the garage room is sufficiently inclined to allow the cradle to roll towards the platform during launching; in order to bring the water craft back into the garage room, a motorized pulley is provided, which pulls the cradle into said garage room by means of ropes or cables.
Therefore, even in the system described in EP 2275339 a manual intervention by an operator is required for engaging/releasing the ropes connected to the cradle carrying the water craft.
Moreover, in the arrangement disclosed in EP 2275339 the water craft is arranged longitudinally aligned with the boat, which requires a platform with a large size and—most importantly—a very deep garage room, which occupies useful space in the boat.
The main object of the present invention is to overcome the drawbacks of prior art, by providing a system for launching/hauling a water craft that can be actuated in a completely automatic manner, without the need for any intervention from an operator.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system for launching/hauling a water craft that allows to optimize the use of the spaces inside the pleasure boat.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a system that allows to avoid the risk of shocks, collisions or jamming while moving the water craft.
These and other objects are achieved by the pleasure boat as claimed in the appended claims.